Heartland Genealogy

During the last month - and especially the last week - there has been a lot of discussion in the online genealogy community about the European Union's GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). I didn't pay much attention at first. After all, it is a European Union regulation and I live in Kansas. As the discussion became more frequent, I began paying attention. So, should I care? One blogger made the comment that as a citizen of the United States, he didn't see how we could be subject to any fines imposed by the European Union in regards to GDPR. I don't earn money from my blogs. Nor, do I have 'subscribers' to my blogs. Thus, it would be easy to take the attitude that the GDPR doesn't apply, especially for those of us living in small town America. As I read more and more about the issue for bloggers, I realized that I should pay attention and try to be compliant. So, Why Care? Even though I live in Kansas, I have done research for people fr...

I'm working my way thru GDPR and my various blogs and websites. In the process, I'm having to learn more about how these free sites (Wordpress.com and Google) work. One of the first things I did today was to search my email for GDPR and search again for action required. This was so that I could opt in to the various email lists to which I subscribe. At this point, I don't think I've received emails from all of my lists. Thus, I will be repeating this step in the days to come. The second task on my "GDPR TO DO" list was to create a page for my privacy policy on my blogspot.com blogs ( Heartland Genealogy : Developing Skills and Nemaha Tales ) and then to actually write a policy. For the most part, I copied my privacy policy from my Wordpress blog and modified it for the Google aspects of a blogspot.com blog versus a Wordpress.com blog. I ran into a 'stumbling block' in that my new page wasn't showing on my blog -- even though I had published i...

I'm a 'sometimes' blogger -- with several blogs and websites from Kansas. Being a 'sometimes' blogger means that I blog or add to a website when I have something I want to share. Even though I try to follow laws and regulations affecting the Internet, I tend to focus on Kansas issues. Thus, I was vaguely aware of privacy regulations in Europe but I didn't really pay attention to them. Let's face it, I didn't think they applied to me -- until about 2 weeks ago when discussion of the GDPR ( General Data Protection Regulation ) began appearing in Facebook genealogy groups. Since that time, I've been trying to figure out what I have to do to be compliant! Even though I can usually find the information I want thru Google, figuring out how to be GDPR compliant hasn't been easy. Instead of trying to find information thru Google, I resorted to the forum for Wordpress and the Site Help menu for my Google Site. I'm still working on this...

While searching the Yates Center News for an article stating that Cleo B. Peake was awarded the purple heart, I discovered another cousin killed during World War II: PFC Lovell Mentzer. Notice of the death of Private First Class Lovell J. Mentzer first appeared in the May 3, 1945 issue of the Yates Center News on Page 1. PFC Lovell Mentzer Killed in Germany Mr. and Mrs. E. E. Mentzer received the information Tuesday from the War Department that their son, Private First Class Lovell J. Mentzer had died in Germany. Nineteen-year-old Lovell had seen ten and one-half months service in the European theatre. Graduating from Yates Center high school with the class of '44 he was inducted in the army and trained for an infantryman. In the latter part of last November he was sent over seas and was with the Seventh Army Private Mentzer has five brothers in the service, Technician Fourth Grade Keith in south Pacific, Corporal Talmadge (Tye) in England, T/5 Burdette with the AAF at C...

While going thru Ancestry Hints for my Wells line, I found an intriguing military record for a distant cousin, Byron Peake (Cleo Byron Peake). The records said he was reported missing in action on 28 April 1944. ("World War II and Korean Conflict Veterans Interred Overseas." Database. Ancestry.com . www.ancestry.com : 2018.)

When I spit in a test tube for my first DNA test, I had high hopes of proving a relationship to another Crawford line and ultimately breaking through our brick wall in early Kentucky. Those hopes were greatly diminished when I wasn't a match to a known descendant of the James and Martha (Knight) Crawford line. However, I had matches to descendants of William N. Crawford of Washington and Isaac and Nancy (Miller) Crawford of Kentucky. Those matches have revived hopes of figuring out how my Crawford line fits into the greater Crawford genealogy. Since I have those matches 'painted' on DNA painter, I decided to experiment to see how they overlapped with DNA from my 2nd cousins.

Thanks to a marriage record for Mary Crawford and Alexander Moore in 1793 in Madison County, I've been able to learn more about Mary Crawford. Mary Crawford is shown on the tax lists for Madison County, Kentucky in 1787, 1789 and 1791. According to the document, " Tax Lists (1792-1840): An Overlooked Resource for Kentucky History and Land Title " by Kandie Adkinson, Land Office, Ky. Secretary of State, "women are included on the tax lists if they are the head of household." Thus, I've long assumed that Mary was a widow living in early Kentucky.

For a long time, the Mary Crawford of early Madison County has been a puzzle! Mary appears on the 1787 tax list for Madison County .(1)  She is also listed on the tax lists for 1789, 1791 and 1792 -- all in Madison County, Kentucky.(2) In 1791, Mary purchases 100 acres of land on Sugar Creek from Richard Cave .(3)

I'm writing in response to Russ Worthington 's comment on the Genea-Musing's blog post, When Did Ancestry.com Last Index Ancestry Member Trees ? In the comment, Russ brings up the issue of hints not showing. Since I haven't noticed an issue with 'missing' hints on my un-indexed tree, Russ's post made me question whether I was indeed missing hints. However, I did notice one difference between my tree and Russ's experiment. I work with a public tree and Russ' test was with a private tree. Thus, I wanted to know whether public trees produced hints when the tree lacked Ancestry sources. Thus, I needed a public tree (small) without Ancestry sources. Since I've been searching for Judson Crawford to see if my tree was indexed, I decided to create a small public tree on Ancestry for Judson Crawford, his wife, children and parents.  My first attempt at creating the tree was to drag Judson and his family into a new tree. When I tried to use TreeS...

Thanks to the help of users on the RootsMagic Discussion Forum , I have figured out some of my issues with my narrative report and learned a formatting trick. One of my issues was with the first letter of a few sentences not being capitalized. When I looked at the sentence structure for these facts, I discovered that the 'person' field wasn't capitalized in the template: [person] lived< [PlaceDetails:Plain]>< [Place]>< [Date]>. When I capitalized the 'Person' field, then the sentence began with a capital letter in the narrative report. According to the forum discussion , the capitalization of the 'person' field should not affect the sentences. Thus, I didn't go thru my various fact types and change all of the [person] fields to [Person]. I'm guessing that I did something to the sentence structure for these few sentences that kept them from formatting correctly. Since my 'work-around' (capitalizing the 'person'...

As a former user of The Master Genealogist, I expect my current genealogy software to take the sentences created by each event and build a narration for an individual's life. Unfortunately, I still have a lot to learn about the way RootsMagic builds the narrative report. Thanks to information posted in the RootsMagic Community Forum , I did figure out how to create paragraphs (i.e. some white space). I elected to customize the sentence where I wanted a new paragraph by adding two carriage returns at the beginning of the sentence. Those two carriage returns create a blank line before the sentence. Now, I need to figure out how to resolve several other issues: The first letter is not capitalized for some sentences (see second paragraph above) In many cases, there doesn't appear to be a space between the superscript at the end of one sentence and the first letter of the next sentence. Hopefully, the forum will help me figure out how to resolve these issues.

During the last few years of my career in teaching, I was required to write SMART Goals. Even though I did not excel at writing those goals, I think about the acronym (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) when considering genealogy goals. Although I haven't written my 2018 genealogy goals in true SMART goal fashion, I have broken a broad goal of 'researching my family history' into smaller more specific tasks. With these smaller goals, I will be able to check them off within the next year (hopefully). Although I'm always working on my broad 'research my family history goal', I hope to be better at being able to 'measure' my progress in 2018. Thus, I need to establish my 'baseline' or beginning stats for 2018. RootsMagic 11,269 People 3,744 Families 29,407 Events 3,215 Sources 39,752 Citations Ancestry 11,257 People 2,095 Photos 99 Stories 1,753 Records 1,105 People with Hints 8,151 Total Hints 6,541 Rec...

While thinking about my goals for 2018, I started thinking about what I've accomplished during 2017. Since I didn't record statistics from my tree, I can't 'brag' about the number of ancestors added. However, I have learned a lot during 2017. In January, I learned all about Bullet Journaling thanks to a Wacky Wednesday hangout sponsored by DearMyrtle . Even though I had tried various planners during my career, I failed to consistently use a planner. I wasn't even good at checking Google calendar, let alone getting everything into an online calendar. However, I did create and use a bullet journal for 2017 and have started one for 2018! During the spring of 2017, I applied to become a beta tester for RootsMagic's tree share feature. Around the middle of May, I was accepted as a beta tester and spent the next month working with uploading segments of my tree to Ancestry and playing with the various features to help RootsMagic find and fix errors. When the ...

This week's ' Saturday Night Genealogy Fun ' challenge was to create at least one genealogy goal for 2018. Thanks to DearMyrtle's Wacky Wednesday on Bullet Journaling , one of my goals for 2017 was to learn to use a Bullet Journal. I can truly say that I've accomplished that goal since I've been planning my 'journal' for 2018. In the process of that planning, I've written several goals in my genealogy journal. Knowing that I need specific goals that I can check off (i.e. SMART goals), I have broken them down into smaller steps. Below are some of  my broader goals: Get my tree indexed on Ancestry! Reduce number of shaky leaves on Ancestry Use RootsMagic's link to FamilySearch to add sources for my direct line ancestors Connect with cousins on Facebook by sharing family photos Blog about my ancestors  SCAN -- I still have some photo albums to scan Clean up files (sadly I have duplicates of some photos and others that need re-scanned) DNA...

My list of sources has a LOT of duplicates. The vast majority of these duplicated sources are coming from Ancestry.

Ancestry recently made some changes to their Ethnicity display. I first became aware of this change during a webinar. I was reminded of this change this morning when I read " Ancestry Updates DNA Ethnicity Presentation " on The Genes Blog. Thus, I decided to check out my Ethnicity screen. The 'new' part of the presentation is the time line. As I began clicking thru the time line, it showed the migration from Europe to the United States. I still need to learn about these maps and how they can help me with my paper research!

My first 'research logs' were paper based and I was fairly consistent about keeping those records. However, when I started using software to manage my family tree, my diligence in recording what sources I had used began to slip. My software of the time, The Master Genealogist, had the ability to maintain a research log but I incorporated that tool into my research process. Recently, webinars and blogs that I follow have emphasized the need to maintain an accurate log of sources used. Knowing that I was lacking in this area, I decided to try the tools within RootsMagic to see if I could improve my research process. I first tried this logging process while on a trip to the Midwest Genealogy Library. I transferred data from my TODO spreadsheet into tasks on RootsMagic. During my visit to the library, I was able to mark the task completed and transfer it to the Research Log. With the Research Log window open, I then entered the bibliographic information and transcribed dat...

Historically, I have published most of my genealogy research under 'Heartland Genealogy'. When RM introduced TreeShare, I was having trouble getting a new tree established with that name. Thus, my TreeShare name is currently called 'Crawford-Briles'. For the sake of consistency, I would like my old tree name back. Thus, I asked the Facebook community if it was possible to change the name. So, I'm going to try to change the name of my tree. I have closed my tree in RM and backed it up. Dropbox is in the process of syncing both the file and the backup. On Ancestry, I opened Tree Settings and changed the name of the tree. I then re-opened RootsMagic. In RootsMagic, my file is called Crawford-Briles. Hopefully, it will still link to my renamed tree on Ancestry - Heartland Genealogy. To test that, I clicked on the TreeShare icon. Thankfully, it is telling me it is connected to my Heartland Genealogy Tree.

Due to my tree not showing in a search on Ancestry, I'm learning more and more about how TreeShare works. One of my observations is that I often have a 'note' at the bottom of my sources on Ancestry. One of those notes was a 'burial' note. Most of the time, they are titled, 'residence note'. Pictured is such a note on the record for George Mentzer in my Crawford-Briles tree.

After working thru my 'study' of what happens to sources with TreeShare, I wondered whether an image gets downloaded multiple times when attaching a census source to individuals of a family. In my previous post, TreeShare and Sources , I looked at the 1900 census for Paul Emory Mentzer. In that census, Paul was listed as a 4 year old son of Charles Mentzer. Prior to accepting any Ancestry hints for the 1900 census for Charles Mentzer, I had one source attached to that event.

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to handle Ancestry hints, TreeShare and sources. I have a fairly well sourced database that includes a lot of census research. Some of that census research dates back to the microfilm days. I tried to use the standards of the time to write citations for the data. My original citations would have been written in PAF as a NOTE. Some of those citations still exist in my current data. When I transferred from PAF to The Master Genealogist, I tried to go back thru my file and convert those NOTEs to facts. In the process, I also started using one of the citations templates provided by TMG: Richard Lackey's Cite Your Sources (c1980). Since the Master Genealogist community promoted the use of Elizabeth Shown Mills' Evidence! Citation Analysis for the Family Historian , I switched to that set of templates for my sources. When my data was transferred from TMG to RootsMagic, I also participated in Thomas McEntee's Genealogy Do-Over ...

The verdict is in!   I need to accept hints on Ancestry in order for my tree to become searchable. Ironically, my DNA 'shared matches' list was working even though I was accepting the hints on RootsMagic and not on Ancestry! Not only do I have shared Ancestry hints and circles but the list of hints and circles has been growing. Thus, I didn't think there was an issue with the way I was using RootsMagic! Now, that I'm aware of the issue, I'm going to change my workflow. Accept valid hint on Ancestry Use RootsMagic to source that hint and manually add the image (as I was doing prior to TreeShare) Ignore pink sources and media on TreeShare  In the meantime, I'm going back thru my 5 generation pedigree and Clicking confirmed sources and changing them to undecided within RootsMagic Accepting those sources on Ancestry  Now, I wait for Ancestry indexing to pick up my tree. I would like to thank the RootsMagic community (both Facebook and Roo...

I work from RootsMagic. I click on the lightbulb and accept the hints. I write the citations within RootsMagic. I then use TreeShare to upload my changes to Ancestry. All of my citations transfer to citations -- but -- are listed in the 'other citations' area. Even though they are based on those accepted hints, they are not listed as Ancestry citations. Below is a link to Judson Foster Crawford on my tree: h ttps://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/115166653/person/270137689801/facts My tree (Crawford-Briles) has lots of sources attached. Ancestry views my tree as having NO sources. Thus, it doesn't show in a search. [Try searching for Judson Foster Crawford died 1949 and look for the Crawford-Briles tree.] Yes, this and the member connect issue are Ancestry issues. BUT -- they wouldn't be occurring IF I didn't use the lightbulb to accept the hints. Yes, I could avoid this issue by accepting the hints on the Ancestry side -- BUT I lo...

Mary Crawford purchased land from Richard Cave in 1791. Below is a transcription of that deed.

My ancestor, James Crawford, died in Preble County, Ohio in 1854. In 1821, he sold a piece of land to Wm Sellers. This Preble County Deed (Book 5, page 87), identifies the seller as James Crawford Junr and indicates that James was from Preble County, Ohio. The deed is signed by James Crawford and Sally Crawford. Sally's signature is significant since it identifies my James Crawford and not another James Crawford living in Preble County at the time.

The Facebook group, Genetic Genealogy Tips and Techniques , has provided lots of opportunities to learn how to use my DNA results to support my research -- and to break thru brick walls. Recently, Shelley Crawford has been posting links to her blog posts detailing how to use NodeXL and Microsoft Excel to find DNA connections. Yesterday, I followed the steps in her post, Visualizing Ancestry DNA Part 2 - Loading the Files . With my first attempt, I downloaded all of my matches and worked my way thru the instructions to get a 'blob'. I went back and rechecked my 'alternate' file to make sure I was skipping my siblings, my mother and 1st cousins (once removed). It took a while for the graph to appear but it was still a blob. So, I started over and downloaded my matches for 4th cousins or closer. After creating a new file and again making sure the 'skip' information was included, I still had a blob -- just less dense. Knowing this wasn't what it was supp...

I'm experimenting again! Can I use RootsMagic to modify an overly long citation and then use TreeShare to get that citation uploaded to Ancestry. The first task is to locate the 'offending' citation in my list of sources. Since I know that this citation is associated with several facts for William Taylor Thompson, I'm going to use his screen to locate more info about the citation. When I look at the birth sources, I find the 'offending' citation. From the info on this screen, I know the citation is listed under 'History-IA Wapello Portrait ...' in my list of sources. Since I only want to change the citation one time, I'm hoping that I will be able to use the Master Source List to make the change. After opening the Master Source List (Lists menu), I scroll to locate 'History-IA Wapello Portrait ...' in the list. Having found the source, I click on the Edit button to make changes. I'm going to shorten the citation by removin...

On Wednesday (June 28), I uploaded my RootsMagic data to Ancestry, thus creating a new tree. Since I want to be able to utilize the TreeShare features of Ancestry, I want this new tree to be my primary tree in Ancestry. Thus, I attached my DNA results to this new tree. I knew that when I switched my DNA to this new tree, it was going to cause some 'hiccups' in my DNA screens AND that it might take several days (weeks) for those 'hiccups' to go away. However, I am seeing some strange, unexpected behavior that I'm trying to figure out the cause. The first strange behavior is with the 'Shared Ancestor Hints'. I expected them to drop to zero and had documented those matches. Even though I can understand the few I have back, I can't figure out why I got those and not others. The 5 shared Ancestor Hints are from my Briles (Broyles) / Rush line. I have circles for a couple of men on my Briles line and for my Rush line. However, these 5 people are not ...